Samit D’Cunha, Tristan Ferraro and Tilman Rodenhäuser
In the last few months, suspicious fires in warehouses and aboard aircraft, the severing of undersea power and Internet cables, GPS jamming, cyber operations against critical civilian infrastructure, and allegations of influence operations and election interference have been depicted as ‘hybrid warfare’ by both politicians and the media. So-called ‘hybrid threats’ or ‘hybrid attacks’, as well as allegations of the use of proxies to project power while attempting to obfuscate attribution and legal as well as political responsibility are a symptom of worrying developments, in particular in Europe. The geopolitical environment today is characterized by increasing/ed tensions among states, a militarized security environment, instability within countries, projection of power through a range of covert and coercive measures, and – at the global level – an increasing number of armed conflicts.
While neither ‘hybrid’ threats or warfare, nor the notion of proxies, are defined in international law, the use of such terms is often accompanied by the suggestion that certain acts are taking place in a ‘grey zone’. The term ‘grey zone’, in turn, appears to suggest that the line between armed conflict and peace is blurring, or that the law is unclear or non-existent in certain of these situations. However, while some of these types of operations are old and others are new, international law always applies. And more specifically regarding international humanitarian law (IHL), determining whether a specific situation amounts to armed conflict remains an assessment of facts based on well-established legal criteria derived from the four Geneva Conventions as well as their Additional Protocols.
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